Winterowd

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Winterowd, W. Ross. Ed. Contemporary Rhetoric.
(1975)
  • Metalanguage—language about language—An anthology
  • Rhetoric is all human discourse - not just persuasion
  • Stresses invention, return of invention, not mere observation.
  • Has divided anthology into three sections: Invention, Form, Style
  • Wants to get away from our exclusive teaching of the expository essay.
  • Focuses on exigency, audience and constraints, which equal written gestalt. Focuses on constraints
  • BVE code switching etc. constraints
  • We devastate students by insisting they change dialects, hinders emotive writing
  • Sees pre-writing as faddish, but healthy. Different for everyone, a kind of deconstruction
  • Equal emphasis on process and product
  • Wants us to reconsider the importance of topics in teaching.

  • Janet Emig “The Composing Process: Review of Literature”

    • call for an examination of the writing process and the way we teach it.
    • Case studies

  • Wayne Booth “The Rhetorical Stance”

    • Rhet cannot be completely controlled or taught part magic/genius and part teachable, worth the effort.
    • Looks at specialized language.
    • Cannot teach but can guide because it requires wisdom.
    • Rhetorical stance is proper balance between logos, ethos, pathos.
    • We must expand the audience for our students!
    • We must not assign pointless subjects for exposition.
    • We must avoid the perversions and pitfalls of rhetoric, like Quintilian, but the good writing not writer.

  • Janice Lauer “Heuristics and Composition”

    • Argues that theorizers concerning freshman English need to break out of the ghetto created by the shallowness of the theory that has been available for them to work with.
    • One way to open the field up is through studying work done with heuristics by psychologists.
    • Agrees with Booth that invention has remained static since Ramus, suggests Booth may find the labels he needs in heuristics.
    • Heuristics is the study of methods and rules of discovery and invention—the plausible and possible.
    • Relating to psychology. How does the mind solve problems?
    • “Unless both the text makers and the teachers of composition investigate beyond the field of English, beyond even the area of rhetorical studies for the solution to the compositional problem, they will find themselves wandering in an endless maze.

  • Ann Bertoff “The Problem of Problem Solving”

    • Corrective to implications of Lauer’s essay.
    • Argues against heuristics, but Winterowd finds her argument perilous.
  • Winterowd goes on to say comp teachers have neglected theory, which could enrich teaching.

  • Lauer - "Response to Anne E. Berthoff, 'The Problem of Problem Solving'"

    • Lauer responds to Bertoff finds work “misdirected and unsupported” but agrees with comments on heuristic, but finds them in no way incompatible with psychology.
    • In the end, Bertoff’s belief that problem solving denigrates creativity is unfounded and indicates she did not read laurel’s bibliography

  • Berthoff - "Response to Janice Lauer, "Counterstatement"

    • Bertoff responds snaps back, says there is s difference in their concepts and premises, not merely in terminology says turning to psychology distracting and dangerous
  • Winterowd inserts a chapter of his own, listing the pros and cons of Laurer and Bertoff’s approaches.

  • Karl Wallace “Topoi and the Problem of Invention”

    • outlines Perelman’s theory of invention and adds his own set to topics based on the classical notion of proofs: logos, ethos, and pathos.
    • Loci=topoi-Perelman, who follows Aristotle’s topics

  • Richard Larson. "Discovery Through Questioning: A Plan for Teaching Rhetorical Invention"

    • “Places rhetorical invention in the context of a modern comp class and gives a set of topics that constitutes a simple device to generate ideas, but Winterowd says not as good as others. This is against? Who wants teachers to create

  • Burke “The Five Key Terms of Dramatism”

    • Advocates classic oration exordium, narratio, confirmatio, reprehensio, peroratio: attention getter, state the case, prove the case, refute the opponent’s case, sum it up.
    • Like CLUE who did it, by what means, etc. The butler in the pantry with a candlestick. Murder.

  • Kath Fort “Form, Authority, and the Critical Essay”

    • Fort’s article argues against the destructive classroom practice.
    • Formal tyranny of dogma controls ideas.
    • Absence of thesis guarantees failure.
    • Form reflects attitude/forms attitude.
    • Sees a coming rebellion.
    • 2 prong argument. 1. Available forms determine attitudes. 2. The critical essay has turned literature into a consumer product.
    • Winterowd comes in to say the composition classroom is often a formal tyranny of the expository essay.

  • Burke “The Nature of Form”

    • Form is “ the arousing and fulfillment of desires” Offers choices of forms and comments on their interrelations and overlapping.

  • Marshall McLuhan “The Printed Word”

    • Old ideas, but Winterowd says important ideas.
    • “We are at a moment of interface between print culture and electronic culture, contrasting even conflicting technologies.
    • Book is extension of the eye TV is extension of central nervous stem.

  • Winterowd “Beyond Style”

    • exploration of the rhetorical consequences of form. Calls for formal reading of works to understand form, but finding form as it will suffice.

  • Winterowd “The Grammar of Coherence”

    • Coherence has three levels: case relationships, syntax, transitions. Deep structures.

  • Louis Tonko Mille “The Problem of Style”

    • Is there such a thing as style” or is it simply thought and differences in thought? manner and meaning.

  • Richard Ohmann “Literature as Sentences”

    • One proposition embedded within another.

  • Francis Christenson, “ A Generative Rhetoric of the Paragraph”

    • paragraphs as mini essays to improve student writing